Will AI kill the marketing agency?

If AI might destroy humanity, should marketing agencies be worried?

And should your business care?

 

There have been some fairly unsettling stories about artificial intelligence in the news lately.

Researchers who actually work for some of the world’s leading AI companies are reportedly worried that the technology they’re helping to develop could become a serious threat to humanity. One former Anthropic researcher has described the next couple of years as “crunch time for humanity”, while other researchers have put a surprisingly high probability on AI causing catastrophic harm within the next decade.

 

So, naturally, our first thought at Mondo was “Blimey!”  Our second was… Is AI going to kill the marketing agency first?

 

Admittedly, that’s slightly less dramatic than the end of civilisation but it’s a question worth asking. Because AI is already changing marketing at an extraordinary rate and if you’re a business deciding where to spend your marketing budget, you might reasonably be wondering…

 

Do I actually need a marketing agency anymore?

 

Unsurprisingly, our answer is YES – but probably not for the reasons you might think…

 

AI can be really, really good at marketing. We’re not going to pretend AI can’t be brilliant. It can.

 

Give it a decent brief and it can research a market, analyse competitors, generate ideas, write copy, create images, produce social media content, develop email campaigns, suggest advertising concepts and analyse data. And it can do much of this in seconds – a job that might once have taken a creative team half a day can now be completed before you’ve finished your coffee. That’s fantastic.

 

It’s why we sometimes use it ourselves and, so far, haven’t had to send an SOS to Sarah Connor!

 

But here’s the important distinction… AI is good at establishing background, researching data and at many elements of producing marketing. However, that doesn’t mean it’s exceptionally good at deciding what marketing your business actually needs.

 

And those are two very different things because…

 

Businesses don’t always need more marketing. They need the right marketing.

 

This is where we think the conversation gets interesting.

 

Imagine you tell an AI: “We want to grow our business. Can you create a social media strategy?” It will happily give you one. There’ll probably be content pillars, posting schedules, audience personas, engagement strategies, video ideas, paid campaigns and a 30-day content calendar. It may even be very good… but should you actually be doing all of those things? That’s a different question.

 

A proper marketing strategy starts before the tactics. It asks:

 

• Who are your best customers?
• Why do they choose you?
• Why don’t they choose you?
• What makes you different from your competitors?
• Where are your best opportunities for growth?
• What does your sales team know that your marketing team doesn’t?
• What do your customers actually care about?
• What are you trying to achieve?

 

And perhaps the most important question of all: What shouldn’t you be doing?

That’s where experience, judgement and a proper understanding of the business really matter.

 

Sometimes you need someone to tell you you’re wrong

 

We think disagreeing with you is one of the most valuable things a good marketing agency can do.

 

If you tell an AI: “We think Facebook is going to be really important for us,” it will probably say: “Absolutely! Here’s a comprehensive Facebook strategy…”

 

Whereas a good marketing agency might say: “Why?” and then perhaps: “We’re not convinced your customers are there.”

Or: “We think you’re targeting the wrong audience.”

Or: “We don’t think you have a social media problem. We think you have a proposition problem.”

 

That might not be what you expect or want to hear but it might be exactly what you need to hear. Marketing isn’t simply about doing more – it’s about making better decisions.

 

A good agency gets under the skin of your business

 

AI can provide an enormous amount of information but someone still has to decide what it means.

 

Your business isn’t a prompt. Like all businesses it has a story. It has people, customers, history, politics, personalities, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and problems that won’t necessarily appear in a spreadsheet.

 

Good humans in good agencies know all of that and it’s difficult to replicate with a prompt. It’s that understanding which turns a collection of marketing activities into a strategy.

 

That’s why, at Mondo, we don’t see ourselves simply as a supplier of marketing services. The most successful and valuable relationships are the ones where we become an extension of the client’s team. We challenge things when we think they could be better and we work with our clients to turn that understanding into marketing that actually has a purpose.

 

So, should you use AI or a marketing agency?

 

We’d argue that’s the wrong question. The real question is: Can you find a marketing agency that knows how to use AI properly?

 

We don’t think the future is going to be humans versus machines. It’s going to be humans using machines intelligently versus humans who aren’t.

 

AI can make a good marketing team considerably more productive. It can help us research faster, explore more ideas, analyse more information and test different approaches. It can help produce content more efficiently, automate repetitive jobs and free up more time for the things that actually require people. That’s a good thing so we’re embracing it rather than being frightened.

 

For us at Mondo, the marketing agency isn’t dead but the marketing agency that fails to adapt might be. If an agency’s entire proposition is: “We’ll write you 12 social media posts a month,” then yes, AI is a problem.

 

If you’re paying an agency mainly to produce things that a good AI system can produce in seconds, you should probably be asking some questions. But if your agency is helping you understand your market, develop your proposition, identify opportunities, build your brand, create ideas, choose the right channels, manage campaigns, measure results and continually adapt your approach…that’s a different proposition altogether. And arguably a more valuable one.

 

Because when everybody has access to powerful AI tools to produce content, content becomes cheap. When everybody can generate ideas, ideas become plentiful and potentially samey. So, having the tools isn’t the competitive advantage – knowing what to do with them is.

 

The future of marketing is human + AI

 

AI isn’t on a focussed mission to destroy the marketing agency but we do think it’s going to change it. It will force agencies to become more useful, more strategic, more commercially minded and more accountable for results.

 

There should be less obsession with simply producing stuff and that’s the bit that excites us because our job isn’t to fill your social media calendar. It isn’t to produce marketing for the sake of producing marketing. And it certainly isn’t to impress you with how many clever AI tools we’ve got.

 

Our job is to help your business do better.

 

Sometimes that means a big campaign, sometimes a new website, a better advertisement or getting your brand in front of the right people. Sometimes it’s a careful balance of all these things.

 

AI can help us do all of that more efficiently but it doesn’t replace the thinking. And it can never replace the relationship.

 

So how do you navigate finding the right marketing agency in these changing times?

 

We’d say you need to speak to an agency that’s not afraid of adapting to survive and reap new benefits for its clients. You’d probably be wise to avoid those simply selling production as they’ll struggle to compete with the speed and cost savings of machines. And unless you place no value on experience, insight, ideas, strategic thinking, differentiation and results, you’d be well advised not to just download Canva and hope for the best.

 

It’s worth discussing it with a human – preferably one who knows what they’re talking about and we happen to have a couple of those at Mondo.

 

And, hey, if that still leaves you worried about the rise of the machines, we can always pass you a phone number for Sarah Connor!

 

N.B.  Image produced in collaboration with our friends at AI.